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When You Can. ASAP. NOW!! YESTERDAY!!!!!
This essay begins with a confession: Its writer is a very impatient person. He hates standing in any kind of line. He becomes agitated when vehicular traffic is unaccountably slow. Typical Type A man.
Withal, I have become more and more aware of Type A personality traits that have invaded almost every aspect of American society. I am doing some self-therapy to shed some of my own the Type A behavior because I see what it is doing to our common life. I've let it do quite enough to me and to those with
whom I live.
* An acquaintance told me some time ago that he switched his breakfast venue from one diner to another, not because the eggs and bacon were better in the new place but because his food was served to him more quickly there. After breakfast, he goes home to fall asleep over the morning paper. What's the rush?
* I suggested to my wife the other day that we were about to run out of printer paper. I did not know she had ordered it through Amazon.com. UPS showed up 18 hours later with a couple of reams of new paper. The very next day, I read a New York Times story about the asylum Amazon has become as its workers are pushed, pushed, pushed to do more and more faster and faster. Some of them are nervous wrecks. Even this chronically impatient man could have waited -- and expected to wait -- several days for the new stock to arrive.
* There are apps (what a helluva word) on my cell phone, which I can use at any hour of any day or night to sample what's new anywhere on the globe. If one of them could get the news from the planet Ork, I could read it, too -- through midnight's bleary eyes.
* Wishing not to be outdone, two of those apps have perfected the instant text that arrives unbidden at all hours bearing some item of nervous news. If the damned things had lungs, they would pass out from overexertion.
* It may be my age and infirmity -- as is often enough suggested to me -- but I am certain that motorists more and more are using their automobiles as bumper cars, driving as fast as possible, cutting in and out of traffic. Such drivers easily save a couple of dozen seconds in a year's time. I used to drive that way, thinking that the equipoise of the planet depended on my getting to Point A tr�s rapidement. As the movie prototype of the traffic cop would say, "Where's the fire?" One such officer having pulling me over said, "It'll be your funeral soon enough, Father, if you don't slow down." The collar saved me a citation.
As I consider my life at its present stage, all circumstances considered, I experience a longing for mellower times:
* My father, who did not begin his practice of law until he was nearly 45, had a lot to cram in to his new work life. Yet he came home for lunch most days, and not only was at home for dinner every night by 5:30 but contributed regularly to its preparation.
* When people in our small town who had no telephones -- and that was most of them -- needed to get word in timely fashion to friends or relatives elsewhere, they counted out their coins to pay for a Western Union telegram at five cents per word for a 15-word message. They would show up at the railroad station, write or print it out on the familiar yellow sheet and hand it in to the telegraph operator. If the message was over 15 words, he would suggest the omission of a word here or there. Having collected the 75 cents, he would turn to the telegraph bay, tap out the Morse Code signal for the Western Union operator at a central office 170 miles away and, when bidden by his distant counterpart, tap out the 15 words in a minute or two at the most. And that was that. Within the hour, the message would be delivered in person or by phone to any place in the 48 contiguous states. We thought it amazing.
* The first newspaper with which I had anything to do was a country weekly that came out on Thursday afternoon so as to catch the southbound train for distribution purposes. The only deadline was 5:05 p.m. -- 15 minutes before the scheduled time of its departure. If we learned from the station agent that the train was behind schedule, we breathed easier and slowed down a bit. It would be 30 years on until I had to live with the manic deadlines of a metropolitan daily newspaper. The atmosphere in the city room in that era was oppressive in its own way as the clock ticked and the sweat ran down one's neck. For a brief period I served as an assistant city editor in charge of enforcing deadlines. Clipboard in hand, I strode about the city room, prodding the staff to get a move on. On one occasion, a woman reporter told me that if I said one more word to her about her story she would "ram that clipboard right up where the sun don't shine." On another, our ace police reporter threatened to kill me. He was serious. It would not be news to anyone that it was during those days I became dependent on the martini to soothe away my anxiety. Stupid way to live.
* In 1950, the daily train through our town carrying mail, express and passengers took 7 1/2 hours to traverse the 225-mile distance from one terminus to the other and another 7 1/2 hours to return -- stopping at 21 intermediate stations along the way to serve the public. No one thought it a slow train. Today? No more train or rails on which they might run. Now one can get from the village to the southern terminus in under three hours by automobile, to the northern terminus in less than an hour. I do wonder if that is what Henry David Thoreau meant by "meanness going faster."
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